Geek/Writer Rambles Ignorantly About Shit

Writerly Update

So. Back from an overnight shift, it’s 6 am and I’m pretty tired, but what the heck, let’s do a little bit of a writer’s update.

I finished Lumineers (this really needs a name change, I used to call it Solarpunk but that’s inaccurate as well, the world has changed and evolved so much that the names are ill-fitting). It clocks in at over 80K, obviously. I’ve got it on hold for a bit (not sure how long, maybe October, maybe sooner) while I start looking at other stuff to tackle. Originally, I was planning on submitting to some anthologies (got started on one for Meerkat Press’s Behind The Mask but realized my story felt… too mundane and seemed to have no purpose so I scrapped that). After my first failure, I decided maybe writing for a particular theme just isn’t something I can/want to do right now.

Instead, I randomly decided to go through my One Drive folder where all my start/stop projects can be found. I found some notable ones I enjoyed.

Ice: I think I mentioned this one in the early days of this blog. Ice follows a female protagonist who gains super powers (I’m sure you can guess what sort) and mostly deals with her early days. I was 23K into that one (can’t believe I dropped it after getting that far). It’s a mix of good & bad stuff. If I went back into it, I might restart entirely or I might give the first 23K a pass through and shape it up so that I can move forward and write the whole story. I was only 7 chapters in (had started on the 8th) and in the first act (so to speak) of the book. There were three acts (that structure tho!) and 28 chapters planned as a whole so it likely would’ve ended up the same length as Lumineers (totally not intentional). If I get back to this, I will probably alter the world quite a bit, for one, I’m not sure if I’ll keep it in the real world (as in earth) or if I’ll go ahead and do a completely different universe, pushing this more in the direction of a modern fantasy? We’ll see. I’d like to finish this one though. I think I can polish it into something workable. It’s a planned trilogy (though as it’s above all else, a super hero story, there was always room for more) and I’d like to be able to go through all three parts of that trilogy.

Dragon’s Dogma: Name totally stolen from the great game I only played the demo of. This was a short story that came out of a picture I saw on reddit’s fantasy board a long time ago. It’s a simple picture of a dragon deep into a cavern, staring at a group of heroes. Classic heroic fantasy type stuff. It conjures obvious cliches of such tales, and I decided to imprint that in a universe I’ve created (and would love to write in). The Dragon is the POV in this one, and it’s an action heavy short story from the perspective of a big boss basically, in a sense. I really enjoyed the writing for this one but never finished it because I believed that ultimately, the story was short and had nothing to offer. I’ll finish it and probably send it around until I’ve literally sent it to the smallest of magazines. I don’t think it brings anything new to the table but it’s something that, as a fan, I would enjoy reading, I think. .

The Warlord: Set in the same universe as the above (no legit name for this universe except I title it Magnum Opus which says a lot about what I’ll hope this whole thing will one day be (damn you Brandon Sanderson for beating me to it with Stormlight Archive, or maybe Steven Erikson is the first to blame) relatively huge. That’s for another day though. The Warlord is a short story and a prelude to the first story that formed this universe in my head. It follows the fall of a Warlord into slavery. The Warlord itself is of a different species (essentially an anthropomorphic dragon, yes, I know, original) and I tried to present it as a unique culture. Originally, I was even gonna have the whole species be intersex but some awkward writing later and I decided to move away from that (I’d still like to tackle that though, later on). It’s an 8 part short story and reaches just under 10K. I sent it to Clarkesworld Magazine and got a neat rejection letter back. I’ll go over this one again and see if I can keep sending it around. Hitting near 10K means it’ll be a bit of a harder sell though. So if it doesn’t go anywhere, I may just post it here or find some other means to do it. I still enjoy the story.

Deeds of Violence: You’ve seen this one before, it’s incomplete right here. I’ve written 20K worth and was into the end of the 2nd chapter/part/story before I stopped for reasons I can’t quite recall (which is exactly the way I stop everything else). There’s still potential to keep going with this but I’m not sure if I will or if it’s worth it. Maybe I’ll go at it infrequently, the way my hero Togashi does with HxH. The difference here being I don’t have nearly the same reputation or talent.

Gods Among Men: Forgot this one even existed. Another one cut a bit short. I’ve got a logline for this so I might as well copy-paste it: The collateral victim of a superhero’s saving-the-day obsesses himself with vengeance again said hero when he learns he could have been spared. Need to re-read this and see if it’s worth keeping and finishing or if it’s something that should get deleted. At 13K, it was at an awkward position where unless drastically cut, it couldn’t really go as a short story and so either way, I’m not really sure where to go with this one.

And that’s it. So goal is, find what’s salvageable, polish it, and try to send it around to see if anything bites. Obviously one of those is a novel and that’ll take a much longer time, but the rest are regular lengths and Deeds of Violence demands no rush (I could probably post 2.2 now if I wanted to).